Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication such as voice, packet data, and so on. These systems may be based on code division multiple access (CDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), frequency division multiple access (FDMA), or other multiple access techniques. For example, such systems can conform to standards such as Third-Generation Partnership Project 2 (3gpp2, or “cdma2000”), Third-Generation Partnership (3gpp, or “W-CDMA”), or Long Term Evolution (“LTE”).
Transmissions from a transmitter to a receiver often employ a degree of redundancy to guard against errors in the received signals. For example, in a W-CDMA system, information bits corresponding to a transport channel may be processed using fractional-rate symbol encoding and symbol repetition (or puncturing). Such encoded symbols may be further multiplexed with encoded symbols from one or more other transport channels, grouped into sub-segments known as slots, and transmitted over the air. While symbol redundancy techniques may allow accurate recovery of the information bits in the presence of noise over the channel, such techniques also represent a premium in the overall system transmission power when signal reception conditions are good. Such a premium may undesirably reduce the system capacity, i.e., the number of users the system can reliably support at any given time.
It would be desirable to provide techniques to allow efficient transmission of data in a W-CDMA system to minimize transmission redundancy and increase capacity.